


my mind that burned

by svnflowerz



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/F, Lesbian Piper, Not Canon Compliant, Piper Week 2020, messy tenses, yes i gave piper two lesbian aunts :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24867853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svnflowerz/pseuds/svnflowerz
Summary: things stick to your skin. women who love women and men who love men exist in strange corners of her dad’s work, they exist freely in her family and in the home her family’s built. when piper looks back she thinks of the balancing act her heart went through. she thinks about how it was easy to remember her aunts and her home before they moved. before things changed..or - piper through her memories learning, unlearning and love
Relationships: (Minor) Piper Mclean/Jason Grace, Piper McLean & Drew Tanaka, Piper McLean & Leo Valdez, Piper McLean/Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	my mind that burned

now, piper knows what it meant. she doesn’t tell her dad, she tells him what matters. introduces him to the people she cares about. she spares him the pain. 

he wanted the best for her. sometimes that meant trying to hide how much the world sucked. but a dad’s dreams of protecting his daughter don’t always come true.. piper remembers being seven and on set for the last day of shooting for her dad's first big blockbuster. she remembers the whispers of the crew on set, remembers stumbling into a room where several men were laughing as two women kissed. she remembers tripping back out and finding her dad and going home. 

things stick to your skin. piper knows her aunts sara and jess, knows their easy smiles and knows that one always has an arm around the other. they’re in love with each other, always have been for as long as piper’s known. when she was younger she didn’t know that others could think it was wrong, she knew that they were in love and her family loved them and she loved their daughter rebecca who was five years younger than her. 

things stick to your skin. women who love women and men who love men exist in strange corners of her dad’s work, they exist freely in her family and in the home her family’s built. when piper looks back she thinks of the balancing act her heart went through. she thinks about how it was easy to remember her aunts and her home before they moved. 

when piper was ten, her dad moved them to los angeles. she loved learning to surf with her dad, she loved sinking her feet in the sand, she loved how the sun still warms her back like it did in oklahoma. she missed the family they left behind, but her dad promised visits. 

she never loved the schools. she’s never had a great track record with them. she was always hopeful when she started at a new one, though. her dad still dropped her off for her first day when she was ten. she didn’t end up making any friends. she did hear her classmates mock people like her aunts. it’s the one school she doesn’t feel bad at all for getting suspended from, even when her dad gives her sad eyes after he gets the call on the school's story of how she punched a kid in the face. at ten, piper forgets to tell her version. 

when she looks back, piper thinks being ten and in a city away from her family, with her dad taking more and more roles and kids that ran their mouths about shit their parents told them were wrong is where it started. 

later, at sixteen, holding her first boyfriend's hand in hers as she feels her pulse race for the first time she can remember as she looks at someone else is where it ends. _reyna_ . piper had been worried for this meeting, worried that jason would suddenly remember being in love with the girl he knew for years, the first person from camp jupiter he remembered at all. _reyna_. her long neat braid rests over her shoulder, a cape pinned to the top of the gold plate on her chest, the laurels in her hair, the intense look in her eyes as she stares them all down. jason squeezed her hand. piper barely noticed. 

she doesn’t know what it means. it’s been so long piper doesn’t remember what it means. reyna whisked annabeth away and there’s a spike of jealousy in her chest as she wondered why annabeth got the tour around the city when she was stuck with jason - but she knew that’s not what she should be thinking. this is jason, the golden boy who’s taken up almost all the space in her head with fake memories he doesn’t share, and real memories she’s done her best to create. he’s the boy she’s supposed to like. he looks like the younger version of the actors who were cast for the roles of _hero_ and _love interest_ that her dad could never get. 

it all went to shit in the end, leo possessed and fire rained down on new rome. jason helped her up onto the argo and when she looked back she saw imperial gold armour and flowing purple capes and her fingers twitched and she wondered what was wrong with her. 

she didn’t try to think about it. piper discovered very quickly that the more you try to avoid thinking about something, the more it haunts your thoughts. it’s in leo constantly hitting on girls he sees when they stopped for a quick quest on their way to greece even when he didn’t seem to actually be interested, it’s in how annabeth tried to tease hazel about a crush on frank no matter how many times hazel insisted he was way older because she was the only one out of the girls without a boyfriend, it’s in annabeth and percy being found in the stables having gone out of their way to find time together and piper realizing she was thankful jason hadn’t tried the same thing. 

she still couldn’t think about it as much as her mind would like. piper was busy charmspeaking eidolons and fighting monsters and trying to be the girl that plans picnics for her boyfriend. she was the girl that didn’t even know it’s her boyfriend’s birthday. she got a cornucopia she doesn’t understand the point of, she got a sword hazel taught her how to use, she tried to remember why she picked a dagger over a gun. they lost percy and annabeth. gaea tried to turn them against each other and she tried to turn them against each other and she tried to turn them against each other. she talked to her mother and wondered how her father fell in love with her. 

it’s the part of her life that people in the know will ask her about for the rest of her life and it’s the time of her life she tries to block out the most. piper tried to fight a war with a year of spotty training and she remembered the family she found in camp half blood, the family she missed in oklahoma, the friendships she made in a flying boat. 

now, she tries not to remember that she lost her best friend.

at sixteen piper had to fight a war and she doesn’t remember half of it and at the end of it all in camp half blood looking at jason and missing leo and wondering what the fuck she did for the past year she thought of the memories hera gave her and she held his hand as his girlfriend. “jason,” she said. “jason i think we should break up.” and she let go of his hand as maybe a friend. 

the breath she let out as she saw jason nod felt like a door opening, finding a key she hasn’t seen in years, a memory she’s lost warming her heart. 

she found reyna before the romans left, she didn’t know how she felt around her. she still hadn’t had time to think about it. but, as reyna confided in her the words her mother gave her that had been messing with her mind, piper tried to remember everything she learned as head counsellor of the children of love. 

“it could mean a lot of things,” piper said. “maybe you’re meant to fall in love with a mortal or a god.”

reyna nodded, looking out at the forest and the strawberry fields and everywhere but piper’s eyes. piper was missing something and she dug deeper and thought of her aunts who she hadn’t seen in years and she thought of the word demi _god_ and she tried again. “or,” piper said. “maybe you’re meant to fall in love with the daughter of a god.” 

her eyes met reyna’s and reyna’s gaze burned the same way the sun does on a hot summer day. “maybe,” reyna said, her voice little more than a whisper. somewhere inside of her, piper thought about how there were more things she wanted to say. but, reyna had a camp to go lead and they both had lives they needed to relearn to live. “piper, send me one of those iris messages if you’re near new rome,” reyna said with a smile. a strong smile because reyna seemed to be built of strength even after a war. piper promised she would and then reyna left. 

piper remembers how after the war she goes back to her cabin to find her half siblings turning their barbie dreamhouse camp cabin into a pillow fort. piper saw drew throw a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers at her and ducked just in time, matching grins grew on their faces. after the war she got the chance to learn her siblings and learn how to be daughter of aphrodite when she wasn’t in love. 

she spent a year at camp and she missed leo’s questioning of the camp education system and she missed her dad and her family and she missed the seven that had gone back to new rome and she missed the campers that leave after the summer and go back to school. drew and lacy both went back to their school in brooklyn. before drew left, piper found her. when piper met drew she saw the picture of the bullies that made her life miserable. ater, saying goodbye to her sister piper knew a very different drew. 

“yes, piper?” drew asked, eyebrow raised, lip glossed mouth turned down. piper saw drew’s eyes twinkle and while she might love her sister, drew could still be a lot. 

“be safe,” she said. 

drew sighed at that, but the corner of her mouth quirked back up, “don’t worry piper. the most i have to worry about is this bratty thirteen year old figuring out when the gsa meets.”

piper threw a pillow at drew and drew threw it back, it hit piper right in the head because drew had ridiculous aim and was much better suited to throwing daggers than piper. it was the closest thing drew had given her to a hug at that point and as piper watched her leave she felt her fingers twitch and she thought about the different types of love that aphrodite is supposed to represent. 

as a daughter of love piper shares a quirk with her siblings. it’s the need for a first kiss that matters. at sixteen piper had had kisses from a boyfriend she’d let go when she realized she didn’t know what she liked about him. but, she had never had a kiss that was just a kiss. 

it’s the kiss piper calls her first kiss later in life. at sixteen, in a camp during the year with most of her friends gone piper met a daughter of hermes and piper learned to mind the porch of cabin 11 for booby traps. at sixteen, when piper was trying to decide if she wanted to live in the mortal world or in the corners of camp half blood or new rome piper fell into a relationship with a girl who was happy just to mess around. 

she didn’t know if she was ready. she knew that she liked the shape of the girls mouth, she liked the way the girl never let her win whenever they raced to the beach, she liked the way the girl always snuck over to her table at meals even though it wasn’t allowed. she will always like that the first kiss that was just a kiss is on the lava rock climbing wall because the girl wanted an edge to get to the top first. later, piper will prescribe that everyone has one easy relationship. at sixteen piper learned she liked girls. at sixteen she had girlfriend that didn’t mean much and she broke up with her after a month and piper learned that she had had something she would never want to forget, for the first time in a while. 

leo came home on february fourteenth with a heart shaped chocolate box. piper kind of wanted to hit him, but he was her best friend and he was _alive_ and they iris messaged jason, who was in the city going to normal school for the first time ever, and she hugged leo and only left him one chocolate and she listened to his stories about calypso, 

“you know,” leo said, fiddling with the chocolate wrapper. “she’s with the hunters now. i went to save her because i thought i was in love with her and i knew it was wrong but - i don’t think i like girls. i think i just thought i was supposed to. i didn’t really love calypso i just. i knew i was on her island because i was supposed to fall in love with her, and like she’s great and all and i made her promise to send me the weird postcards she finds as she travels the world, but i don’t really miss her like i should’ve.”

yeah. piper thought she knew as she stole a glance at jason in his dorm room. 

the summer after the war was the first summer that camp half blood had known peace in years. piper got a bead with a squirrel for the infestation they had to fight off. lacy got the whole cabin to paint each other's toes and piper realized she'd never loved camp more. 

at just turned seventeen, piper made a choice she never regrets and she visited camp jupiter. 

it’s beautiful today and it was beautiful then. percy was set to go to university in new rome, even though annabeth was aiming for an ivy league, and piper could see the appeal. she wasn’t not sure if she’d like to go to university in new rome, but she thought she wouldn’t mind living there. she liked the idea of a city that’s safe. there was talk about a camp half blood equivalent but cities aren’t built overnight. 

of course, the reason she was visiting new rome wasn’t for the beauty of the city. it was for the girl she still hasn’t gotten out of her head. not that she tried too hard. 

now, piper likes to look back on the trip. she never tells anyone the details and nobody knows to ask. at seventeen, having had a boyfriend she realized she didn’t like and a girlfriend she did, but not enough to stay with, she went to visit a girl who’d made her think. the trip leads to a tour of a hidden city and piper brushing her fingers against reyna’s and neither of them doing anything more, piper didn’t stop liking reyna, but she wasn’t ready to try to date a girl who lived six hours away. 

instead, piper brought leo to los angeles and finished a senior year. she iris messaged with her half siblings and skyped with her aunts and uncle and cousins from oklahoma and applies to university and had to pick between oklahoma, los angeles and new york. she went away and came back and changed her major and she watched a city grow in and next too and around camp half blood. she tried dating a boy and realized it really was just girls for her and learned the feeling of the word _lesbian_ on her tongue. 

then, she heard the girl she never let go of was transferring out of her own hidden city to the university she’d grown into. and at twenty, piper finally gets a date with the girl that sparked her to learn to be again. 

at twenty two, piper thinks she’s unlearned almost all the things she never should have had to learn.

in kindergarten lots of kids get married. when piper was five she met a girl with silly bands on her wrists and braids with beads and they traded ring pops and took turns on the swingset. she doesn’t remember her kindergarten wife until she’s twenty two and sitting between her aunts with reyna across from her smiling as her aunts tell embarrassing stories. now, she knows why the things when she was little hurt the way they did. she knows why her heart goes soft when she looks at reyna, she knows why theres a different sense of safety in between her aunts. 

she reaches out and grabs reyna’s hand and when reyna plays with the bracelets her siblings made her at camp she doesn’t even think about the past, too happy in the present.

**Author's Note:**

> hi! happy piper week 2020! piper is a lesbian and i love her  
> sorry for the messy tenses ... forgot the framing device n had to put it back in .. and there r some things in here i wanted to spend WAY more time on but i got tired n didn't want this to be late ! maybe ill come back to it but probably not lol  
> if u want to see more of my piper week stuff it'll be over @zoenightshadez on tumblr :) ty for reading!


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